I Just Wanna Be For You
by maisieinthewood
Summary: If you fall... I come for you / / He will not stand at the end alone and bound; she will break the chains and use them to chain her lifeline to his.


Fic inspired by hyperfixating on Libertine by Sevdaliza.

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_Libertine, if you fall_

_I come for you_

Blood rushes up to drown out the sound of the waves. It would be so easy to leave him, chained and alone. To run.

_Don't look back._

She stares blindly down at the longboat, at the crew. At Will.

_Don't look back._

It would be so easy. As easy as it had been for Jack to leave.

"The hard part had been coming back." She barely hears her own whisper, her own realisation. It wraps around her through and through her chest like a snake, like a twisting vine. "What have I done?"

"What? Elizabeth," Will reaches out a hand, his face a dark storm. "Get in the boat."

_Don't look back._

Her body ignores her screaming mind and she slowly turns her wide-eyed stare over her shoulder to face Jack again, to face her sin and shame. He stands proud, chains hidden, the legend of her childhood dreams come to life. His eyes burn into her, lust and pride and wistfulness and and and... She can barely swallow around her heart in her throat. It's in this moment she realises that even more than loving him, she will die for—with—him. He will not stand at the end alone and bound; she will break the chains and use them to chain her lifeline to his.

"I'm staying with Jack." Her voice is firm, resolute, giving nothing away of the terror she feels, or the giddy joy at finally claiming herpirate even if she is to lose him in the same moment. Jack's face crumples in confusion, and she turns away to face the crew. To face Will. To face their shock and horror. Elizabeth lifts her chin proudly, ever the high-bred Governor's daughter, and looks down at them proudly. "I belong with Jack." It's a confession, a statement of defiance. "If he goes down with The Pearl, I go down with him. That is my choice." This last is said softly, a lover's apology, to her broken-hearted fiancé for choosing Jack and a moment's freedom and a painful death over life in a soft and sweet cage he'd forge with his rough blacksmith's hands. She spares him a sad, small smile as she cuts the ropes before anyone gets any ideas about dragging her into the boat. There will be no heroes here, only the living and the dead.

"Lizzy..." Jack's voice is soft and pained behind her. "I didn't want this for you. I didn't want this." She laughed wetly and dashed tears away with the backs of her hands as she walked purposefully towards him. It takes three whacks of her blade to break the chain connecting the shackle around Jack's wrist to the mast.

"Pirate," she reminds him. "This is me acting on selfish impulse. I can't live in a world without you. I can't sit in that boat and watch the kraken take the man I love and this ship, my home, and go on living. Does that make me a horrible person?" Jack steps in close, nearly free, his still-shackled hand in her hair. He searches her eyes with an intensity that leaves her feeling as naked as if he had stripped her right there on the deck. Oh how she wishes they had the time, that she had taken his thousands of offers before.

_How much time had they wasted?_

"It makes you a pirate. It makes you mypirate lass," he says greedily, like she is gold and rubies and silks and spices for the plunder. She closes her eyes as he places an almost sweet kiss on her forehead. "Help me off with this thing. I don't want to go to me death shackled."

_So much wasted time._

The urgency of the situation hits her, bringing that rush of blood back to the forefront again. Elizabeth is dazed as Jack smashes a ship's lamp and she helps slip the shackle off his lamp-oiled wrist without knowing what she is doing. The light shining on the sea was so bright (this is the last time she would ever see the sea) and there are black spots in her vision, and why can't she seem to get enough breath?

_No time left, it's all gone._

"Come back to me, Bess." His cool hands on her hot face calm her straining heart and she realises the sucking sound she is only vaguely aware of in the background is her own panicked breathing. "There's my love, there's my girl." My takes a breath, shaky and uncertain. "Yes, breathe. I'm with you. You're with me. We're together."

"We're together," she repeated. Her voice was raw, her eyes dazed. "We're together."

_I just wanna be for you_

_Whatever you feel_

_Whatever you feel_

_I come running_

_I come running..._

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This is...rough. And self-indulgent, and my first fic in more than ten years. I know it's not great, and the premise has been done probably. I realised my tenses were inconsistent after writing this. I edited it, but if you notice anything in past tense, please let me know so I can fix it.

I would come back to writing for a fandom that is fairly dead, wouldn't I? Can we revive this corpse, do you think? I made a tumble under the same name. Please come add me, let's talk pirates and have fun. No-drama, only pirates.


End file.
